The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (61 page)

So the house fell into silence and stillness, broken only by Linnet’s soft steps and gentle voice. And that was when Rhiann’s torture truly began. For there was nothing physical to be done, and she could no longer take refuge in her healer mind, in duty.

This day she sat as usual on the stool drawn up to the bed, Eremon’s right hand clasped in both of her own, her forehead resting on the cradle they made. His sword was laid across his feet, as if somehow it might draw his warrior’s strength back to him.

Rhiann heard the clink of the chain as Linnet lowered the cauldron closer to the fire, yet suddenly an abrupt silence fell and Linnet was standing behind Rhiann. ‘It has been more than a week,
cariad
. You cannot go on like this, you will sicken yourself.’

For a moment, Rhiann did not answer, her eyes closed. ‘Aunt,’ she then whispered. ‘Tell me the lore about such people, who sleep and do not wake.’

‘Do not do this, daughter.’

‘Tell me!’

At Linnet’s silence, Rhiann raised her face. Her eyes fixed on Eremon’s gaunt cheeks, the faint fluttering of his chest. ‘When all has been done for the patient,’ she recited, ‘and the patient has not succumbed to the wound or illness, yet will not rise to wakefulness, it is because the soul has become lost in its wanderings, far from the body.’ She gripped Eremon’s hand tighter. ‘And why do souls not return, aunt?’

‘Rhiann,’ Linnet sat down on the bed beside Eremon’s feet, her face stricken, ‘I beg you—’

Yet Rhiann only pressed her forehead into Eremon’s fingers, until his nails stung her skin.

‘The soul,’ she whispered, ‘will be drawn back to a healing body only if it is anchored by something: love, or desire for life, or belonging, or deeds undone, or words unsaid. So you see, it is my fault indeed that his soul can’t find its way back –
he doesn’t have a reason to return
. He doesn’t believe I love him, and how could he? I tried to come back to tell him, but I was too late.’

Linnet leaned over to grip Rhiann’s knee. ‘Daughter, he knows you love him.’

Rhiann flinched from the touch. ‘No,’ she choked. ‘I should have given myself to him with all my heart when I had the chance, and given him a child. And I should never have let him ride away so hurt.’

From within the circle of Linnet’s arms she stared with dry eyes at nothing, for the regret burned too fiercely for tears.

With dismay, Linnet saw the way Rhiann slid into an ever-deepening desolation, a faltering of her will that was more disturbing than any weeping. Alarmed, she called in Caitlin, who managed to persuade Rhiann to take some broth by the hearth one dim afternoon, when the winds shrieked over the thatch outside, and bucked the door-hide on its thongs. After she watched Rhiann eat a few bites, Caitlin rested a sleepy Gabran in her sister’s lap and curled up on the bench next to her.

For a long time Rhiann watched Gabran in a dazed, exhausted silence: the glow of the flames on his pearlescent skin; his sweet, round mouth; and chubby fingers plucking at the ends of her braids. And when she glanced up, it was to see Caitlin staring at her with thinly veiled eagerness. Rhiann smiled bleakly, just to soften the fear in her sister’s eyes. ‘A child is indeed a great tonic.’

‘And I have you to thank for him, sister.’ Caitlin regarded her son sombrely. ‘Without you, he would have died in my womb. Remember how you made me fight, how you gave me the strength to go on? When all was lost, when all was hopeless, you brought me home.’ She grasped for Rhiann’s hand. ‘I know you can do the same for Eremon, Rhiann. Your love for me saved me, and it will save him. You’ll see.’

She said this with such simple confidence that tears flooded Rhiann’s eyes, and she dropped her head until her lips were resting in Gabran’s soft hair. ‘I never gave him a child,’ she whispered, staring at the fire. ‘He went to war thinking I did not love him, and he may die thinking that.’

‘No, Rhiann!’ Caitlin’s hand tightened. ‘He knew, more than any man could. Did you not walk up to the gates of a Roman fort in a blizzard, alone, for him? Did you not throw yourself before a knife once, to save him? Did you not call the stags for him? And travel the length and breadth of Alba, to gain him allies? He knows, Rhiann. He knows.’

Rhiann blinked, and the tears slid down her cheeks. Gabran gazed at her, then reached out a finger to touch one.

‘Rhiann,’ Caitlin whispered, ‘you give us all the greatest of love, in the things that you do. Do not speak of yourself this way – I won’t have it!’ She raised her chin, her lip trembling. ‘You put yourself in danger for us, and have done so many times. When we were trapped here by Urben, and thought Gabran might die, it was you who saved him! You found a way, because you always do …’

Gabran sensed his mother’s distress and began to wail, holding out his arms.

Yet as Rhiann watched Caitlin soothe her son, she found herself not only moved by these words, but caught in the net they cast. Instantly stilled, she stared at the back of Gabran’s head. Nerida had told her to judge herself by what she did, not by what she thought. What she
did
…

Suddenly, Rhiann’s pulse was racing, her palms clammy. She was afraid, but Caitlin was right. She had always been able to put aside her fears if someone she loved was in danger.

When Linnet returned, Rhiann was alone by the fire. She’d stirred herself to brew a blackberry tea, which she could see pleased her aunt, and when she asked if she might spend this night alone with Eremon, Linnet surprisingly agreed.

‘Only if,’ she added, one finger raised, ‘you allow me to feed him at dawn. I don’t want you up all night again.’

When Linnet had gathered up her few possessions to take to the King’s Hall, Rhiann stopped her at the door. ‘I hope you know I love you. You made me who I am, and for that I will always be grateful.’

Linnet’s eyes shone with tears, and she nodded, and tenderly touched Rhiann’s cheek before leaving.

For a drawn-out time Rhiann sat by Eremon’s bed, the rush lamp set close on a stool. Outside, she was aware of the moon slowly rising, for she caught a glimpse of its light creeping beneath the door-hide. ‘I am afraid,’ she confessed to Eremon at last. ‘But Caitlin is right. Have I done so much for others, only to quail at doing so for you? You are worth that to me, and more, so I must find the courage.’ She kissed his hand. ‘You once called me courageous, but I don’t feel it now. I need to find that spark. Help me to find it.’

There was no answer, of course, only the slight wheeze of Eremon’s breathing. From outside came the rattle of the night wind on a metal plough, and the answering bark of a dog.

‘If I come to you,’ Rhiann whispered, ‘will you see me? Is it truly that you are lost – or do you wish to leave?’ She rested her forehead on his hand. The longer she delayed, the greater the risk that Linnet would return and stop her from carrying out her plan.

So at last she straightened, and wiped the nervous sweat from her face. Eremon’s soul wandered, yet was still attached to its body by a thread, because he breathed. So, quite simply, she would have to retrieve him. There was no other choice.

With those words repeating firmly in her mind, she lit another lamp and took it to her workbench. There, she stretched up to the top shelf that curved around the wall, rifling among the pottery jars and rolled packets of bark and oiled linen, until between the last two jars her fingers found the round, nubbled packet tied with three knots in a line.

After resting a pan of water in the coals to boil, she unwrapped the bark on her workbench, curl by curl, until the mound of black, pod-shaped spores was laid bare. They looked so harmless, yet not only would this powder release her spirit from her body, it was a poison that could cause an agonizing death. She had used it twice in her life now, more than most druids ever did. Would she be permitted a third time?

Her blood thumping in her throat, Rhiann stared at the spores. If she used too little, perhaps she would not travel far enough, and Linnet would find her retching uncontrollably on the floor. Too much, and she might travel too far, and never come back. She and Eremon would both die.

In the end Rhiann closed her eyes and prayed to the Goddess as she pinched off a tiny piece into her pestle. She ground it into a fine powder, all the while intoning the ritual words to prepare her soul, trying not to think of Linnet and Caitlin, Fola and Eithne. They had their lives, and they would have to live them. But Eremon had entered Rhiann’s deepest and most secret heart, a place where no one else had ventured.

Taking a deep breath, Rhiann washed her face and hands and combed out her hair, then lined the goddess figurines up along the hearth-stone.

Once when she did this before, she had fancied she saw disapproval in Ceridwen’s stone face. Now all the goddesses struck her as impassive, and she had the strong sense that it was up to her to change this fate.

The last time Rhiann used the spores was in desperation and urgency, and she had not prepared herself properly. This time, she knew she could put no foot wrong. Before swallowing the brew she sat cross-legged on the floor, breathing in the priestess way down to her feet and out of her crown, striving to still her trembling and focus on the glow of her heart.

Only when she could sense the cord of silver light running the length of her body did she take the liquid. Then she lay on the bed next to Eremon, taking him in her arms. She had imbibed such a large dose that she did not have to wait long for it to sweep her away.

First her awareness contracted from the edges of her body, growing smaller as the dark walls around her loomed larger, swaying and moving like reeds in the wind. Gradually, her toes and fingers went numb, and there was a terrible burning on her tongue – the mark of the spores. As her tiny spirit began to rush down the glittering, swirling tunnel of light, she pictured the cord as her will, knowing that her conscious strength was the only thing that would guide her back.

Struggling to hold her sense of self, she fixed an image of Eremon in her mind, the way his true smile spread over his face. And suddenly the tunnel opened out into a night of flaming stars, and Rhiann’s spirit flew free and became one of them, spiralling through the sparkling dust of ages, forgetting at once who she was …

When was the time, and where the place?

After an age of spinning and soaring, free in the ecstasy of the void, Rhiann’s soul was called by something behind the wild, sweet music of the Otherworld voices. It plucked at her, and when she ignored it, captured by the song of a passing swirl of colour and light, it began to tug at her more insistently.

And Rhiann remembered, fleetingly. There was a silver cord, and she must breathe into it. For that moment out of time, the impulse was compelling, and the shimmering voices around her faded. She saw the cord behind her, and breathed, recognizing herself. Its light grew stronger, pulsing with power and, amid the gas and glittering dust around her, something grew solid.

It was ground, and still, thick air above, soft with a diffuse light that came from everywhere at once and nowhere at all. She remembered only to breathe; that she had a will to breathe. And so the call drew her on to the end of a path, beyond the clamouring voices, which sought to pull her back.

Suddenly, she was at a waveless shore, and there she took flight once more, not into the void but out over an endless, dark sea.

For a flame was trapped at the heart of the sea, and to that flame she was drawn. It was a soul-flame twin to her own, yet unlike her steady light, it dipped, like a guttering candle in a storm. When she came to it, she knew that she must envelop the flickering flame with her own light, so it would not sink beneath the dark water.

She tried to curve around the light, but she found she could not move; her wings of flame were attached, bound to her by fear. And then she knew, in the way that instant understanding came in this place, that to shelter him, she could not be contained, by anything.

She must let go of the last boundaries of her heart.

CHAPTER 56

R
hiann’s eyelids were stuck together, the edges heavy. There was, too, a leaden stiffness in her limbs, and from these sensations, Rhiann’s mind grasped that she had been lying like this for some time.

It took an immense effort to move her throat enough to swallow, to coax some moistness from her dry mouth and tongue. And then, the lashes trembling, she tried to open her eyes. Yet just as the merest thread of light parted the darkness behind them, she was struck by the awful thought that she might wake alone.

Her eyelids clamped full shut again, but her breaths had grown harsher, and she felt the ache of unused muscles expanding across her chest as she tried to contain them. She didn’t know where Eremon was, but if he wasn’t here, she did not want to open her eyes. That was it. She would slide away again, back into that strange dream world where people sang with silvery voices, pulling her back from her endless search.

Lying perfectly still, Rhiann closed off those memories and tried to send her senses outwards, delaying the inevitable moment when she would have to face the world, whatever world it was.

She sensed soft furs brushing her chin.

The snap of a fire.

The whuffling squeak of what, she could swear, was a hound lost in sleep.

And someone’s warm breath, so close it stirred the fine hair at her temples.

Immediately, Rhiann’s eyes flew open and looked straight into Eremon’s face, and for a long moment, that was all she could see. The orbits of his eyes were bruised with shadow, yet beyond the red-veined signs of fatigue the irises were a deep hazel in the rosy light of the fire, keen and fully aware. Regarding her, in fact, as someone looked at a new baby when they held it, as if she might break at any moment.

Rhiann found she could say nothing, and was dimly surprised when a tear suddenly welled up and trickled down one cheek. Eremon reached out a finger and scooped up the salty drop, his eyes clouded with profound relief.

Blinking, Rhiann’s gaze ranged lower. One of her arms, as white as the linen sleeve that encased it, lay along the fur covers of her own sickbed. At the end of the arm, Cù’s dark eyes now regarded her, the tip of his tail waving uncertainly over his head, and as she watched, his pink tongue came out and touched her hand. Then Eremon muttered a firm command she didn’t catch, and Cù’s snout and tail subsided out of view.